Well I know its late news but on April 15th Frontier brought its first E170 into SFO operated by Rupublic Airlines. The E170 is replacing the A319 on the LAX trips. Here are some pictures I took on that day.

Looking at those pics, I can't believe this is a "regional" aircraft flown by "regional" pilots at a "regional" airline. To all you Frontier employees, pilots or not, I am sorry that your jobs are being farmed out.

Quoting Flyf15 (Reply 6):Looking at those pics, I can't believe this is a "regional" aircraft flown by "regional" pilots at a "regional" airline. To all you Frontier employees, pilots or not, I am sorry that your jobs are being farmed out.

Well since its operated by Republic, its Pilots and FA's are all Republic. Its basically like a United/Skywest thing.

Quoting Flyf15 (Reply 6):Looking at those pics, I can't believe this is a "regional" aircraft flown by "regional" pilots at a "regional" airline. To all you Frontier employees, pilots or not, I am sorry that your jobs are being farmed out.

RP 170 pilots are probably making as much as they would be making flying the 170 at F9.

RP captains are $53 (per hour, as are all these numbers) first year/ $76 eighth year, and FOs are $23 first year and $36 eighth year. F9 captains are $115 first year and $146 eighth year and FOs are $52 first year and $88 eighth year.

That difference is not really out of line for the aircraft size difference. By comparison, US captains on airbii make $119 second year and $128 eighth year and 190 captains make $79 first year and $89 eighth year. Scale that down to a 70 seater and you're about where RP is.

Oh and I'm really sorry that they're jobs were farmed out to Horizon Air back then too. Its always been like that. Its the airline industry and anything can happen at anytime, and no one should take anything personally. These are like two golden rules of the industry.

Quoting Mariner (Reply 5):The E170's are based in DEN. One does an early morning DEN-SFO, which puts it into the system to do SFO-LAX turns during the day, but flies back from LAX to DEN late evening.

That is an interesting way to plan the flights...

I'm excited for F9. Between the E170's and Q400's, they will be able to broaden the reach of DEN *and* do a bit more point to point. It will be interesting to see where all these planes end up.

As to the E170's being outsourced... so what? Now another airline's pilots are getting paid. It would not be economical for F9 to buy and fly such a small E-jet fleet on their own. Republic flies E-jets for a few airlines and thus has quite a bit more economy of scale. I'm an aviation enthusiast too... but airlines must be run as a business. Too many have destroyed too much money.

Quoting Flyf15 (Reply 6):Looking at those pics, I can't believe this is a "regional" aircraft flown by "regional" pilots at a "regional" airline. To all you Frontier employees, pilots or not, I am sorry that your jobs are being farmed out.

I guess you could look at it that way, but in reality, that would be almost the entire industry that is doing this. I think it is a smart move on F9's part, to be able to utilize the Republic service. The aircraft can be used to test markets for future F9 expansion, and used to markets that won't fill a 318 or 319.

SFO to LAX for example (THIS IS JUST AN EXAMPLE).... The flights are going out at less than 50% full on its own planes. F9 is losing money on the route. So, they bring Republics E170 into the market, and the Republic plane goes out at a 90+ % load factor. Both airlines benefit from this move. Plus it frees up a F9 aircraft to either expand service somewhere, or start a new destination.

If the Republic service proves well, and they benefit from the E170's, you may see F9 eventually look at ordering its own aircraft like US Airways has done (E190's).

Quoting F9Animal (Reply 13):SFO to LAX for example (THIS IS JUST AN EXAMPLE).... The flights are going out at less than 50% full on its own planes. F9 is losing money on the route.

Right. Only the morning flight seemed to be doing well, and they are keeping 2x LAX-SFO and 1x SFO-LAX as A319 to meet that demand. Then on the afternoon flights, they've cut the plane size in half (roughly) and should now how 80% loads on all their flights. Yield is another story, but it'll be interesting.

I'm sure the there must be some kind of sticker at the front door and possibly the safety cards and on board announcements. Regardless I'm thrilled to see more of those birds flying in the U.S. They trully are one of the most comfortable aircraft in the air!

Quoting Mariner (Reply 22):The puzzle is that there are on photos of it on the German website. Usually the Hamburg photographers snap then as soon as they come out of the paintshop, but no luck with 809. Same was with 808.

mariner

Good point mariner. It would be nice to see what the tail of ship 810 will be.

Actually, Frontier has been a little behind in naming 950 and 808. They usually have employees submit entries and marketing selects the names from the submissions. I think they may just be waiting for the last of the mainline jets to arrive this year before accepting submissions for names. This has happened in the past when we accepted the delivery of several jets within a short period.

Also, N874RW has been in rotation in the F9 system as well. No pics, but it is another deer. Very striking photo though. It is a picture of the head of a buck standing in the middle of a forest with snow gently descending onto its fur. Pretty sweet shot.

Quoting Flyf15 (Reply 6):Looking at those pics, I can't believe this is a "regional" aircraft flown by "regional" pilots at a "regional" airline. To all you Frontier employees, pilots or not, I am sorry that your jobs are being farmed out.

I cannot agree more. I flew SLC-MSP with DL last year around this time. 733s are gone to SkyWorst CRJ900s.
Unless you lived in cave for last 10 years this is the trend that started with CRJ100s.

Quoting Mariner (Reply 28):I'm still puzzled that when I go to Planepictures, it isn't showing up, either under Frontier or A318.

I thought it a bit odd too. I was originally just google searching for N809FR but couldn't find anything. So I did a google search by the registration the a/c did it's flight trials under, D-AUAB, and there the pic lay in waiting. Strange huh? Most of the time those Hamburg guys will put notes like will become N809FR for Frontier Airlines. Not this time though...

Actually got into work today just in time to see the new A318 push. Spoke to the CA beforehand and got to take a peek inside. Still no leather seats, but apparently the a/c was pushed into service because of some broken down ERJ-170s in DEN. Currently N809FR is without the trademark DirecTV in every seat back.. not even the actual PTV hav been installed yet. Pretty raw, but that's my F9! Better to force a brand new a/c into service than to cancel a flight!

Quoting ABQ747 (Reply 32):Why does F9 take over some QX flights? For example, Flight 4333 is normally operated by a QX CRJ-700. Yesterday, F9 operated it with an A319. They seem to do that every once in a while.

Because we have a reputation to protect. We always have one of the highest completion rates because we will occasionally cover a broken CRJ or ERJ with an Airbus that happens to be a spare at that time of the day. Maybe it's not better financially for the company, but the SCSM in DEN is just that, a cusomer service manager, and to best serve our passengers we will send a half empty Airbus to cover a fully broken CRJ rather than have a cancelation.

Quoting ABQ747 (Reply 32):Why does F9 take over some QX flights? For example, Flight 4333 is normally operated by a QX CRJ-700. Yesterday, F9 operated it with an A319. They seem to do that every once in a while.

Quoting Tripleboom (Reply 33):Because we have a reputation to protect. We always have one of the highest completion rates because we will occasionally cover a broken CRJ or ERJ with an Airbus that happens to be a spare at that time of the day. Maybe it's not better financially for the company, but the SCSM in DEN is just that, a cusomer service manager, and to best serve our passengers we will send a half empty Airbus to cover a fully broken CRJ rather than have a cancelation.

Exactly! This has happened more often since some of the QX CRJs have returned to the AS system. If there is a spare Airbus available in DEN, the SCSM will make every effort to send it to a city rather than completely cancel the flight. The flight number remains the same so that the passengers don't get confused.

That said, if there is a scheduled upgrade on a particular day, the flight number will be changed to a 3-digit mainline number, in this case 333/330. Since the upgrade is done ahead of time, passenger itineraries reflect the mainline flight number instead of the 4xxx Express. In all of the airlines I have dealt with, it seems that Frontier really works the flight numbers to minimize confusion. For example, whenever an Airbus flies into ABQ, it will be 33x (330, 332,336, 338). When it is a CRJ, the numbers are 4330, 4336, 4338. Republic's E170s are 4838, 4836, etc. An extra section into ABQ will be 2334, 2338, etc. depending on the current schedule. It makes it very easy for employees and passengers to remember flight numbers!

Quoting ORDZW (Reply 36): It makes it very easy for employees and passengers to remember flight numbers!

How true is that! Still feels weird hearing an Airbus call in with a four digit flight number, or we did have a downgrade a few weeks back from an A319 to a CR7.. seriously oversold flight.. not fun.. but it felt very bizarre to fill out the QX Loadmaster form with a three digit flight number!